One fewer vehicle is sickly! After trying about 1000 things to fix the front end wobble in the Land Rover, I finally just took it to a shop and paid $90 for them to diagnose it.
Actually, before I tell you what the problem was, I am going to list off all the things I checked, serviced, or replaced that made little-to-no difference:
- Tires
- Wheel balance
- Shocks
- Brakes
- Front driveshaft
- Steering damper
- alignment
- transmission
- motor mounts
- transmission mounts
- parking brake
- rear u-joints
Now... most of these things needed to be serviced/ replaced/ checked anyway, so I don’t feel like I did any of these thing without need. (The front driveshaft being the possible exception)
Everything on that list, and more, were suggested to be the problem by internet people. To their credit at least a few people asked about the actual problem, which I dismissed because I’d replaced that part...
So yeah... shop called. The problem with my vibration...
Rear driveshaft bolts were loose!
Wait what? That is fucking terrifying!
I replaced the rear flex coupling a couple of years While I am 80% sure I put loctite on those bolts and like 70% sure I got them all torqued to spec, but apparently I didn’t do it well enough!
In fact there is a picture in the above article with both a tube of loctite, a torque wrench, and the flex coupling in one picture so maybe add 5% to that. That said, I also remember not having the right tool to get a good grip on the bolts so... who can say?
Well... the rear flex coupling can say because clearly it was unhappy with my effort.
Anyway. That is done. The shop warned me being loose for that long (seriously it has been a problem for like.... almost two years...) could have damaged the flex coupling, so I’m mulling over blowing the $250 on a rear driveshaft conversion, which swaps the flex for a standard u-joint.
Anyway, happy to have that behind me!